NZ Skeptics Articles

Articles in the category "Reviews"

'Orphan Conspiracies' in need of a good home

1 November 2014

The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy, by James & Lance Morcan. US$5.62 (Kindle Edition), Amazon. Reviewed by David Riddell.

Skepticism'’s Mirror Ball

1 November 2012

The Scope of Skepticism: Interviews, Essays and Observations from the Token Skeptic Podcast, by Kylie Sturgess. Podblack Books, 2012. 151pp. About $NZ18, or NZ$6.40 for Kindle. Visit tokenskeptic.org and click on 'Merchandise' for links. Reviewed by Martin Bridgstock.

Avoiding the trap of belief-dependant realism

1 February 2012

The Believing Brain: how we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths by Michael Shermer. Times books, New York. 386pp. ISBN 978-0-8050-9125-0. Reviewed by Martin Wallace.

A hoax the size of a mountain?

1 November 2011

The Bosnian Pyramids: The Biggest Hoax in History? Directed by Jurgen Deleye. VOF de Grenswetenschap. Watch online (www.thebiggesthoaxinhistory.com): €5.95. DVD: €19.95 (excl. shipping). Reviewed by David Riddell.

The natural origins of morality

1 May 2011

The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values. Sam Harris. 2010. Free Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-4391-7121-9 Reviewed by Martin Wallace.

Good guide to bad science

1 August 2010

Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre. ISBN 978-0-00-728487-0. Fourth Estate, London. $26.99. Reviewed by Feike de Bock.

Evolution book one for the library

1 May 2009

Evolution - What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters. Donald R Prothero, Columbia University Press. Reviewed by Louette McInnes.

Life not so implausible after all

1 November 2007

The Plausibility of Life-resolving Darwin's dilemma, by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart. Yale University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-300-10865-6. Reviewed by Louette McInnes.

How to Poison Your Spouse the Natural Way

1 February 2007

How to Poison Your Spouse the Natural Way: A Kiwi Guide to Safer Food offers an interesting, non-technical, easy-to-read description of the risks we face at the dinner table. Reviewers and readers have been enthusiastic. This book has a recommended retail price of $24.95 but is now available for a limited time to members of the Skeptics for only $15, post-paid.

Origins research a work in progress

1 November 2006

Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin, by Robert M Hazen. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, USA. Reviewed by Bernard Howard.

Castles in the air founded on a rock

1 August 2006

New Zealand's Amazing D'Urville Artefact and Equations of Life, by Ross Wiseman, Discovery Press, 2004. Reviewed by Hugh Young.

Skeptical Podcasts

1 May 2006

Skepticality is a hugely entertaining podcast that explores rational thought, critical thinking, science and the de-bunking of the supernatural and pseudo-science. It features interviews with favourite skeptics such as James Randi and Tom Flynn, as well as scientists, such as Phil Plait and Michael Shermer. The podcast also features general discussion of all things sceptical with its two intelligent hosts Swoopy and Derek.

Climbing down the family tree

1 August 2005

All life has a common ancestor. Or to put it another way, every creature alive today, including ourselves, has an unbroken chain of ancestors going back almost four billion years. At certain points along the path from then to now, lineages have split, and split again, to give rise to the millions of species alive today.

How to Poison your Spouse the Natural Way

1 February 2005

A Christchurch mother who fed her five-year-old son raw beans was surprised when he fell ill. Because they had not been sprayed, she reasoned they should be a natural, healthy snack. But natural, as Jay Mann makes clear in this highly entertaining guide to the contents of your dinner plate, doesn't necessarily mean safe. Beans for example contain lectins, which have no bad taste to warn unwary consumers, but destroy the lining of your small intestine. Alfalfa contains canavanine, which disrupts DNA and RNA metabolism, though you would need to eat a lot of alfalfa to be poisoned by it. Lots of common foods are laden with poisons, all perfectly natural of course, but best consumed in small doses only.

Chinese Voyages Head into Realms of Fantasy

1 May 2003

Zheng He is not a name that is well known in the west. However, his seven voyages from China, through the Indian Ocean to Africa between 1405 and 1435 would place him among the world's great explorers. Yet retired submarine captain Gavin Menzies is convinced Zheng He's feats were even greater. He believes a massive Chinese fleet conducted four simultaneous circumnavigations of the world between 1421 and 1423, during which they discovered the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, even Antarctica. But while they were away, the Chinese emperor turned his back on the outside world and, when the ships returned, had all mention of them erased. Why the records of Zheng He's other expeditions were kept, Menzies does not explain.

Devil’'s Chaplain an Eloquent Advocate

1 May 2003

We Dawkins fans have been waiting since "Unweaving the Rainbow" in 1998 for this. Unlike its predecessors, it is not written around a single theme, but is a collection of Dawkins's comments and reviews of the past 25 years, on a variety of topics, reflecting his wide-ranging interests and passions. His editor, Latha Menon, has arranged 32 of these into six groups and a final letter to his ten-year-old daughter on "Belief". In addition to a general Preface, Dawkins has written a short introduction to each group.

Dummies Guide a Bit of a Parson'’s Egg

1 May 2003

These books are all subtitled "A Reference for the Rest of Us!". Perhaps I'm prejudiced but as far as I'm concerned, dummies is a better term for anyone who uses alternative medicine. Having said that, this book, written by a chiropractor and a science writer with a PhD in the history of medicine and science, is not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Wide-ranging Review a Valuable Update

1 May 2003

This book thoroughly demolishes the pretence that laboratory experiments in ESP have produced statistical evidence for the phenomenon's reality. But like almost all writers on the subject, Hines treats telepathic communication and precognition as merely alternative forms of the same thing. ESP does not exist. But telepathy conceivably could exist, if there was a "fifth force" explain it, whereas precognition would require that information travel backward in time -- an absurdity that can be refuted by the reductio ad absurdum it would produce.

A Skeptical View of Linguistic Gaffes

1 November 2002

Mind the Gap! The book title is intended to remind all who have waited on curved London Underground railway platforms of the risk a careless step poses. The risks Dr Trask warns of are those which can label the writer as illiterate, ignorant of the nuances of English usage, or at least possessed of cloth ears. In offering this review to New Zealand Skeptic I do not imply that readers are particularly in need of the author's advice; rather, his comments have a distinctly skeptical slant, which should be music to skeptical ears (see entry: cliches). Consider the following entries in his alphabetical list.

A Classic Updated

1 February 2002

The Psychology of the Psychic, 2nd edition, by David Marks. Prometheus Books.

In Mendel's Footnotes

1 May 2001

In Mendel's Footnotes: An Introduction to the Science and Technologies of Genes and Genetics from the 19th century to the 22nd, by Colin Tudge. Jonathan Cape, $59.95.

New Ideas on Old Life

1 August 2000

The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals, by Simon Conway Morris. Oxford University Press.

UFOs & Alien Contact: Two Centuries of Mystery

1 May 2000

Readers of NZ Skeptic will have seen R.E. Bartholomew's article "The Great Zeppelin Scare of 1909" in last autumn's issue, no 47. This covered the same event as one of the chapters in this book. Several other chapters describe similar episodes which occurred in other times and other places, and in a final section all these are woven into a coherent story. Each chapter is supported by a copious list of references, most of them newspaper reports pubished during the development and decay of the case concerned.

UFOS & Alien Contact

1 August 1999

READERS of NZ Skeptic will have seen R.E. Bartholomew's article "The Great Zeppelin Scare of 1909" in last autumn's issue (No. 47). This covered the same event as one of the chapters in this book. Several other chapters describe similar episodes which occurred in other times and other places, and in a final section all these are woven into a coherent story.

The Demon-Haunted World

1 November 1997

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, by Carl Sagan. Headline, $29.95.

New Zealand Mysteries

1 May 1997

NEW ZEALAND MYSTERIES, by Robyn Gosset; Bush Press, 1996; 208 pages; $29.95

Dark Nature

1 August 1996

DARK NATURE -- A NATURAL HISTORY OF EVIL, by Lyall Watson; Hodder & Stoughton, 1995; $19.95

River Out of Eden

1 August 1996

**RIVER OUT OF EDEN: A DARWINIAN VIEW OF LIFE by Richard Dawkins.

The Hippopotamus

1 May 1996

Readers familiar with Stephen Fry only for his TV comic appearances (A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, Blackadder) may be surprised to meet him as author of a novel, and even more surprised that such a novel should be reviewed in New Zealand Skeptic. Squash your doubts -- this book is full of paranormal mysteries to delight the skeptical reader.

Roswell Autopsy

1 November 1995

Post-mortem on the autopsy or autopsy on the post-mortem?

Skeptical Books

1 August 1995

When author Arthur Koestler and his wife died, they left money to found a university Chair in Parapsychology. Edinburgh University accepted this gift after some hesitation, and Robert L. Morris has occupied the Chair since 1985. In a university hundreds of kilometres to the south, and some hundreds of years younger, Dr Richard Wiseman has also turned a scholarly eye on the subject. This book is a result of their collaboration.

All the Trouble in the World

1 May 1995

Everyone will enjoy this book. Well, everyone except paranormalists, ecological alarmists, pseudo-scientists, feminists, left-wingers, the entire New Age community, and of course those eternally doom-ridden types who seem determined to drag everyone else down to their own level of self-imposed suffering.

The Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism

1 May 1994

Richard Milton has written this book as a "hang on a minute" reservation about Darwinism and its apparent unquestioned acceptance by mainstream science from geology through to biology (and in one chapter political science) in the manner of the small boy who questioned the reality of the Emperor's new clothes -- "Look Mummy, all those university professors, all those Nobel Prize winners, have got no actual proof to cover their hypotheses with".

Nostradamus -- The 1994 Annual Almanac by V.J. Hewitt

1 February 1994

This book explains an approach to interpreting the French "prophet" Nostradamus's predictions. It is the culmination of 16 years research by an English woman, V.J. Hewitt. She has invented a system of decoding his quatrains using anagrams -- and not just the sort that you get in cryptic crosswords, but huge, French ones. She takes a Nostradamus quatrain, mixes up all the letters, removes the letters of the subject she is interested in (and it could be anything from soccer hooliganism to an air traffic controllers' strike), adds the date, and then rearranges the remaining letters to produce the prophecy that Nostradamus had clearly intended. What's more she does it in French.